We all know that Universal messed up with THE MUMMY, the film that was supposed to be the start of a series of interconnected revivals of their classic monsters properties. When a mummy movie can make $400 million at the global box office and still be considered a disappointment because the budget was so high, a terrible mistake has been made. But even though it makes sense that the studio decided to take some time to rethink their Dark Universe plans after that, I really wish they had still let the second film in the series go into production.
A new version of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN was just months away from filming when Universal put the Dark Universe on hold. Bill Condon, who had directed the 1998 film GODS AND MONSTERS, which was about FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN director James Whale, was set to direct the film, and I thought that was a perfect combination of filmmaker and material. Even now that Universal has dropped the plans of having their monster movies be connected to each other and are having filmmakers come in with their own unique pitches for projects – that's how Blumhouse and Leigh Whannell got THE INVISIBLE MAN and how Paul Feig got the monster mash DARK ARMY – I'm still hoping that BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN will come back around to Condon.
While speaking with Collider to promote his new film THE GOOD LIAR, which reaches theatres this weekend, Condon was asked what happened to his BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Condon replied,
That was a heartbreaker, really. We were involved, we were prepping, we were deep into it, and I have to say… the simplest way to say it is that I think THE MUMMY, and not to say anything against the movie, but the fact that that hadn't worked for them and it was the beginning of this whole reinvention of their monsters gave them cold feet at the end of the day. Because David Koepp was writing the script, I thought it was unbelievably good, and we were on the verge of making a really beautiful movie, I thought. So that was a shame."
When asked if he was allowed to give some information on the script Koepp was writing, Condon said,
I don't know if I am, honestly, because David, I think, is still involved in figuring out the new approach."
And while Condon's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN would have been another big budget movie, he agreed that the lower budget approach being taken on THE INVISIBLE MAN could be the wiser way to handle these films.
The movie that we started was devised as a great big movie, and at the end of the day probably these movies should be smaller."
I think a BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN movie could stand to be a bit bigger than Blumhouse's THE INVISIBLE MAN, just not nearly as big as THE MUMMY.
I really wish we had seen Condon's "really beautiful" BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN with an "unbelievably good" script by Koepp, but unless the project goes into production with someone else at the helm I'm going to continue to hope that Condon will end up being the director of a new BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN someday. It's going to happen eventually, Universal has been developing various takes on the concept for decades, even long before they ever thought of trying to build a Dark Universe.
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